Our Project 2 is a collaboration with a Cold War museum, Langelandsfortet, in which my group will develop an interactive installation for the purpose of integrating it into the museum and in consideration of their target group.
Idea Creation and Mid-way Pitch
As a group, we had five cases to pick from that described the situation of the exhibition and how we should create the assignment. One case that sparked great interest in us was Case 4:
Case 4: An interactive installation to visualise why the museum was built
- built during the Cold War due to the threat from the east.
Is it possible to visualise what was feared: ships through naval attack, planes through air attack, or defence?
The reason we were interested in this particular case was because we had the most ideas related to it. We also had to keep in mind that our target group was elders with mobility issues or dementia, and that the ideas we come up with should cater to primarily them. The three ideas we came up with were:
- An interactive 3D map with buttons to show battles or an invasion with lights and graphics
- An interactive 180-degree binocular in which you can see the image of a threat
- A clear acrylic plate is situated in different areas of the museum and can visualise the image of a threat with image overlays.
We would then use these three ideas to create Lo-Fi prototypes to present to our supervisor for this project, pitch our ideas, and receive feedback. We split up into groups or individually to create these Lo-Fi prototypes. My teammate and I used images we had taken from the trip there and photoshopped soldiers and other war elements into the images. We also created what the actual product would look like with metal supports and a clear acrylic plate standing with the image overlays.
During our mid-way pitch, our supervisor came with good feedback and let us wonder which idea was actually an interactive concept. The more we thought about it, the more it came to idea 2, the interactive 180 binocular stand. The reason being that you actually had to interact with the piece in order to experience the concept by moving around 180%, and it was a less expensive and achievable product than idea 1.
Now that we knew what product we wanted, we split off different tasks among the group to ensure that everyone is doing their part in the project and to also alleviate the amount of work we have. I took on the task of creating the video for the product. The others would start working on the report, the flyer, and the video. Of course, at different points in the process, we included each other to help with certain aspects because we each had our own skill set that was useful to the final product.
AR Video Creation
Our idea was to implement an AR concept into our product. However, one big problem was that we would not actually be at the museum the day of the presentation, so my video would be filling in.
The concept of AR (augmented reality) is that it uses real-time information (graphics, audio, and text) and overlays virtual elements on top of the real-time information. A known example of this is Snapchat filters. Snapchat AR uses your camera as real-time information; the face of the foundation is then used to overlay graphical elements such as doggy ears, glasses, or other fun elements.
I have no experience whatsoever in creating AR products, so a lot of trial and error happened during this experimentation phase. I had an idea how to create such things simply, but it still took a bit of research on YouTube to get the basics down.
My idea for this product was to use a 180-degree Google StreetView image, download it as a 2D image, add animation and sound effects on AfterEffects, and use Premiere Pro to actually bring the interactive 360-degree life into it.
I used a programme I downloaded online that retrieves the 360-degree Google StreetView image of any place in the world. Luckily, the Google Maps team has data on the museum on a sunny day, and we used that image as our ground battle.
Having that foundation down, I went to look for photos of both NATO and USSR soldiers. There were criticisms from my group about the soldiers I picked, saying that they looked too modern. However, as the history nerd I am, I explained that the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and therefore we could display the image of threat from any time period between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also easier to create coloured images of soldiers on a coloured background in Photoshop than a ack-and-white s soldier. My skills in photo colorization are nonexistent, and I did not have the time to learn such skills. I found enough pictures to use, but I made sure I did not have too many, as I needed to animate each and every picture I put in.
AfterEffects was used in the majority of the creation of the AR video. The Google Street View image was a 2D image and easy to work with. From our prior lessons in after effects, I used my knowledge from that to develop a video as if war broke out, with soldiers shooting, planes flying, and bombs dropping. This also goes to say that I animated each bullet coming out to give it a more realistic experience.
PremierPro has a function that can turn footage into a VR or 360-degree experience. At first, it didn’t work with just a photo, but adding in all the elements and creating a video on AfterEffects allowed me to actually interact with the video in 360 degrees.
The most challenging part of the whole AR creation was exporting the video between the different programmes and uTube. That itself took the most trial and error and research. There were instances where my video was just 2D or was inverted. I used countless YouTube videos online to aid me. The simple fix was to ensure that during the export stage to mark the video that it is a VR video and fix the settings accordingly.
Once I got the hang of the creation of the AR video and the exports between the programmes, I made another AR video depicting naval battles. The museum does have a submarine, but it isn’t in the middle of the ocean. Our goal with this was to ‘put it in the water’. The problem was that Google Maps does not have any 360-degree photos of them in the middle of the ocean; however, Adobe Stock Photos had really high-quality photos of an ocean at 360 degrees available for download. I repeated the same process as I did for the ground battle and uploaded it to YouTube.
The one thing I spent most of my time doing over and over again was the sound effects. Initially, all the sounds were happening at the same time, with the volume level at a high level. I decided to scrape all the audio and start from scratch. Using PremierPro, I was able to control in which direction the audio was coming in and at what level. Not only was it easier on the ears, but it was also more realistic.
The poster, binocular, and brochure
While I was creating the AR video and receiving feedback from my teammates, The rest were busy creating the poster for our exhibition, the binoculars in FabLab with the help of the staff, and the brochure to be handed out at our exhibition. Through their process, they also asked if certain things worked, such as colours, texts, layout, and design.
At a certain point, the brochure design isn’t aligning with the rest of the product’s designs. This was because of colour, layout, and font. We discussed with a group that our values had to stay consistent.
The first print of the 3D-printed binocular was superb; however, the holes for the eyes were not usable. A second print went through a couple days before our exhibition, but a printing failure happened, and we weren’t able to use it.
We had very conflicting solutions towards the binocular as it might harm the image of our AR concept. We were afraid that if we purchased the ‘VR Headset’ from a hardware store, the guests would think this was a VR concept. But upon agreement, we would simply explain to our guests our concept and that it’s supposed to be a still-standing 360-degree exhibition in the binoculars.
The Report
I explained to my group that I may not be of great help writing the report as I have never written an academic report in Danish nor any essay in Danish, but luckily the abstract part of the academic report was in English, which I am fluent in, and I put in all my effort to make it perfect.
The closer we got to the deadline, the more I realised much of the analysis was missing and being left to do at the last minute. This was because of a loss of interest and also because of not really knowing what to write. I tried my best to write in Danish and write according to the analysis.
My main points were kept in the edit, but as Danish is not my strong point, the others in the group were there to help polish what I wrote and improve it.
We went through each section of the report together before handing it in, analysing it, editing it, and discussing if we liked it or not. Not only did this allow us to be on page about what is being written, but it also gave us the opportunity to provide input or discuss what needs to be changed. Once we were happy with the report, we handed it in.
Feedback from the Exhibition
We received lots of positive and meaningful feedback from students, teachers, the Langelands Mayor, and representatives from the museum. Many of them thought our concept was a great idea for our target group. That is a single-standing exhibition that does not require much movement; the concept of AR was different and unique, and it provided a different experience in the museum. One of the main issues with our product is that we had no idea the cost or effort it would take to make this exhibition, which is an important thing to know, especially when funding is needed.
Report Feedback
The overall report structure was something that needed focus and improvement. We received praise and good feedback on the abstract part, methods, and problem formulation, but our problem lay in the analysis part. We only analysed a small aspect of our project instead of including everything, such as our three ideas at the beginning, our mid-way pitch, the creation of the brochure, poster, and video. An important part of the analysis is to analyse the whole process part of our project, but considering we only included the prototype, there wasn’t much analysing or discussing to do. Also, some part of our analysis was just straight gibberish, as it was just repeating or summarising what we did instead of theoretical and physical analysis. Not only was this feedback incredibly useful to understand why we struggled to write it, but it also helped us better ourselves in the future when writing more academic reports.
Project 2 was a great opportunity to work with many different ideas in different ways, whether it was together or individually. At every part of the process, it was important to update or inform the group about it, as input and discussion are great ways to improve and create a better product. I was incredibly grateful that my group was very social, as it was better for me to speak out more about my ideas. Not only have I developed a skill in AR video creation but also how to work with others in a long academic report.
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